


a matter of his heart

by damnspacebois (Race_Jackson23)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Injury Recovery, Love Confessions, M/M, Shiro (Voltron)-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 22:19:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17496434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Race_Jackson23/pseuds/damnspacebois
Summary: Shiro’s heart stops the moment the Lions ascend.If it weren’t horrifying, it might be funny. There had been so many times that day when he thought it was over. Thought that he would die again, so soon after coming back, and none of that had phased him. It wasn’t until the Lions of Voltron took off for the heavens that fear seeps through.or: those moments we all missed post-s7 where shiro sits by keith's bedside and it's him he wakes to





	a matter of his heart

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I've been working on this one a while - since the night s7 dropped, actually. Finally got around to finishing it, and I hope you like it.

Shiro’s heart stops the moment the Lions ascend.

If it weren’t horrifying, it might be funny. There had been so many times that day when he thought it was over. Thought that he would die again, so soon after coming back, and none of that had phased him. It wasn’t until the Lions of Voltron took off for the heavens that fear seeps through.

Even if he lives to one hundred and twenty, it is a moment he will never forget for the rest of his life. Watching the Lions rush for the stars with the Robeast in tow, the Atlas’ monitors shrieking warnings of energy surges while the enormous mech remains motionless, helpless. The dead silence from each of his crew, all unwilling to even gasp a breath even as the world is anything but quiet. Chill fingers tightening on his lungs, stealing the very air, as the knowledge that the Robeast must be a bomb filters into his brain, and squeezing further as he realises they’re going to be too close to escape in time. That they’re not going to make it.

 _Dear god_ , his whole being screams. Parts of his soul rent apart, falling like tatters of frayed cloth as he realises he’s going to lose them. The tatters go up in flames the further Voltron gets from the ground.  _Dear god, not them_ too.

They say your life flashes before your eyes before you die. Shiro’s died before, so he knows it’s true, but this time, as his life falls apart before him, as his  _family_  races to their deaths, he sees nothing. Knows nothing. Nothing but  _they’re going to die_  chasing itself through his wrecked head on loop, growing roots that still the feeble thump of his heart until he’s choking on grief.

The Robeast explodes. From Earth, it looks as harmless as a firecracker, blazing bright and fizzling out just as quickly. He knows better, though.

A sob reaches his ears but he is too far in his own head to tell if its Coran or Sam or Veronica or anyone else. For all Shiro knows, it’s himself. There are tears, he realises, tracking down his cheeks, and he startles, because it has been years since he’s let himself cry that the feeling of it is almost foreign. Once he’s started, though, it’s impossible to stop, and the part of him still reeling from loss – the whole of him, really – wonders dimly if that is why he avoided it for so long.

The fingers tighten.  _They’re gone._

As soon as he thinks it, the Lions reappear. They’re descending – no,  _falling_  – falling to Earth, streaks of colour left in their wake, and it is as beautiful as it is terrible because not even the streaks can conceal the fact that they’re free-falling, that their paladins have lost control. Falling like ribbons isn’t enough to make him forget that they’re about to hit the Earth’s surface with a force too great for the human body to survive.

If they weren’t already  _dead_.

The Lions can handle a lot, he knows. Bombs and firepower deters them only for a moment. Plummeting to the ground is something that they can shake off. But this … even if they could withstand  _this_  – their paladins, even Allura, are held together by scraps of muscle and bone so fragile that the thought of the internal trauma alone makes him want to throw up. If they’d fallen from their seats at all–

He cuts himself off as the floor beneath his feet shakes with the Lions’ impact. And shakes, and shakes again. Only when it stops does the grip on his heart unclench enough to propel him into action.

Disembarking the Atlas is a blur. Later he won’t remember how he gets out, only that his throat is closed up, his thoughts left behind as he races to the nearest plume of dark smoke. It registers dimly that the sun is leaving him sweltering in his suit but he can’t tell if the sweat beading at his brow is because of that or from worry. It’s too much, it’s all too much, but then he’s reaching the Lion nearest to the Atlas and it’s Black and that means Keith and maybe it’s for the best that he gets this over first because if Keith’s gone losing the others might not hurt so much because his heart will have already been  _ripped out_ –

Black is worse for wear. Her paint is chipped and scratched, and his stomach twists uncomfortably as he realises that one of her eyes has blown out completely. Luckily enough, her mouth is slightly ajar, and so getting in isn’t a hardship, which is good because he might have gone even more mad with worry if he failed to get through immediately. As it is, his brain throbs with the need to  _get in get in get in_ , the need to  _know_  urging him on and almost making him sick.

And then he’s in the cockpit. Nothing looks out of place, not a single wire exposed, the lack of purple light and the smashed the only odd things. From the door, he can see only a single display has cracked, the spidery lines catching in the sunlight. Not even Keith – still seated, Shiro’s brain notes for a relieved second – looks out of place, the back of his head poking up above the seat’s top. For a second,

But then Shiro sees that Keith’s head is tilted back too far to be normal. That blood has dripped from his head to the chair to the floor directly behind it, coalescing into a dark puddle that he nearly slips over in his race to Keith’s side. His heart stops again for the second time that day, and as his eyes reach Keith’s face, the two streams of blood from his nose disturbingly sinister on the stark white of his skin, he fears that it will never start again.

~

Keith’s heart stops once on the way back to the Garrison and twice in surgery.

That first time, Shiro is there. He is there as they load Keith into a truck to take him back to base, has two fingers on his neck to check his pulse. He feels it as it stutters out, is the one that screams for the drivers to halt and give him time to get him back when it does. They are lucky that time, lucky that Shiro manages to beat the life back into the chest under his hands, and he can only pray that it does not happen again while on the way, because he isn’t sure how long that luck will hold out. It is only that sheer dumb luck that gets them to the Garrison and Keith into the nearest operating room.

The times after, Shiro is three floors down in a stuffy hallway turned makeshift waiting room. He won’t know until  _after_ ; after the others have been retrieved and whisked away to that same floor, after he’s joined by Sam and Colleen and Coran and Romelle and Lance’s many,  _many_  relatives, after the others have been given the all-clear. He tries to feel relief when he hears that, tries to reassure himself with every visit not about Keith that any good news is  _good news_  but he still cannot make himself stop pacing.

After Coran falls into his seat in relief, the news about Allura’s likely recovery still ringing in their ears, a hand grips his and he needn’t to look to know it’s Romelle. At this point, she is the only one still waiting like he is, her friendship with Keith keeping her on her feet. Everyone else has collapsed into chairs or onto the floor, the news that their loved one is safe and alive leaving them drained but happy, but Shiro won’t relax like them. Can’t, until he knows if Keith’s ok.

“He’ll be alright,” Romelle murmurs. It sounds like she’s trying to reassure herself more than him, but Shiro appreciates it more than he can say. “He’s strong. He’ll fight his way back to you.”

“To us,” he says, but the words are hollow even to his ears. They both know the truth.

Still, he latches onto that, because Romelle is right. If there’s one thing he knows about Keith, it’s that he will always fight to be by Shiro’s side, no matter what. It is a loyalty, a devotion, that Shiro doesn’t know how to respond to. He never did, not even when they first met and it was just admiration, nor when it developed into puppy love that Adam had teased him about at the time. Now, when that loyalty is far beyond anything Shiro could ever have imagined and Adam has long since parted this earth and longer still Shiro’s life, when Keith has literally traversed the universe for him, when his is the face Shiro thinks of when he thinks of home, it is far harder.

And harder still if he left him.

 _It would be fitting if Keith left_ , Shiro thinks bitterly as he and Romelle lapse back into silence, their hands still linked. Fitting, because Shiro is always the one leaving, always running, and Keith’s the one that stays. Fitting, for the universe to take him away when Shiro’s had the reality of his running thrown in his face by a single plaque in a far-too-small memorial. Fitting, that when he has started to realise the future far too unstable to keep putting things off that it proves just that to him. It would be just what he deserved for choosing everything but the person he loved.

Twice. He’s done it twice, now, to two different men. He still doesn’t know if he was right, but God, the consequences  _hurt_. After all, Adam’s gone now and any chance of clearing the air gone with him, and it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth that he can’t really name, because he doesn’t love him anymore but he  _had_  and now he has nothing to show for it.

Would it be like that with Keith too? Would he be left with nothing to show for his love for Keith? He doesn’t know if it’s possible.

He’s not sure if he could survive that.

~

They survive.

Miraculously, against all odds, they all survive. Bumps and bruises abound, broken bones and torn muscles the regular, yet all the paladins live the first night, and then the night after that, and after that, and so on until the doctors declare them out of the woods. They’re all still unconscious after that first week, but those left awake are assured that their condition is due to Quintessence depletion that should resolve soon and not worry over their unconscious state.

All except Keith, that is.

It’s no secret the doctors are baffled. They don’t say it in as many words, of course, but Shiro’s not an idiot. There’s a concern in the air that isn’t palpable with the others, born of unfamiliarity with Keith’s internal system and the effects of Quintessence that even Coran is unable to answer, and it makes Shiro desperate for the arrival of the Blade members he knows are incoming. Pure and simple, they  _don’t know_  whether he’s ok or not, and that strikes fear in his heart.

He’s ashamed to say he’s a poor captain in the weeks leading up to Krolia’s arrival on Earth. Day after day he spends by Keith’s bedside, some days praying, others sleeping, leaving only to check on the others. Thanks to Sam though, he knows he has the time for his lapse in leadership – with no imminent threat, they all have the time to take a breather. His lack of responsibility weighs heavily on him still, and so almost all the time at Keith’s bedside is torment.

 _Almost_.

Two weeks in, Pidge is rolled into Keith’s room, her mother commanding her hoverchair and father walking alongside her. She still looks banged up, a yellowing bruise covering the most of her right cheek, but her colour has gone back to normal. Gone are the dark circles underneath her eyes too and his heart soars from seeing her.

“Pidge!” he cries out as he sees her, getting up from his spot to give her a gentle hug. Despite his intentions, she winces and he grimaces in apology. “Sorry. But you’re out of bed!”

“Just in the chair,” Colleen says sternly. “We thought it was a good idea to get her out of the room.”

Shiro nods. Having spent a decent amount of his childhood in and out of hospital rooms, he was familiar with the drag of it. From the look on Pidge’s face, she’d become acquainted with it too.

“Well, it’s good to see you here,” he offers.

Pidge nods, then nods over at Keith.

“How is he doing?” she asks, her voice soft, and he remembers with a jolt that her vocal cords had been damaged from all the screaming she’d done as she fell. He shrugs, feeling that little bit guilty for not having visited enough to notice, and Pidge frowns. “He hasn’t woken up yet? Do they know when he will?”

A pit opens in his stomach and he stumbles into it. It isn’t the last time he ends up being asked that question, but it is the first, and his heartbreak must show on his face because Pidge changes the topic quickly. He’s grateful to her, and to all the others after who do the same, because he’s not sure he can answer that question without losing himself, and… well, it wouldn’t do for him to be benched permanently when he’s literally the only person who can pilot the ATLAS.

Pidge’s arrival heralds the beginning of Keith’s visitors. After Pidge comes Lance, then Allura, and finally Hunk, all insistent upon visiting their leader even in their own injured states. They’re lucky, compared to Keith, and they know it too, guilt shining on their faces as they sit by his bedside and talk quietly to Shiro about their days. Lance, in particular, seems to take it the hardest but that’s hardly surprising considering he’s Keith’s second in command.

At one point, though, Pidge, having read up about comas and brain injuries and such, organises for Team Voltron to meet up in Keith’s room. There, crowded around his bed, they chat between themselves with abandon. They’re loud, louder than they should be considering Keith needs his rest, but he can’t bring himself to stop them.

“It helps,” Pidge says when she notices his uncomfortable shifting, “hearing our voices? Maybe he’ll hear them and come back to us.”

And so, with nothing left to lose, he tries it.

~

He doesn’t try it for a while, of course, or more accurately, he doesn’t actually talk for a while. When he tries, a lump forms in his throat and the words refuse to move past it not matter what he tries. It is not until a week after Krolia arrives that they spill from his mouth.

Krolia’s arrival is a godsend. She turns up with the second lot of rebels the week after the first, and though he knows she is onboard, it takes her and Kolivan some time to disembark and organise their crew. Once she steps foot on Earth, though, he is there waiting for her.

Strong arms pull him into an unexpected embrace. Used to contact meaning violence, he stiffens, before it registers that she means to comfort him and he relaxes. Relaxes too much, he fears, because the second he does, the tears spring to his eyes and he cannot hold them back. Earnest sobs fill the air.

They stand there for what feels like hours, Shiro’s tears staining her Blade uniform while Krolia rubs circles into his back. Rumbling comes from her chest like the purrs of a cat and he is oddly comforted by it. His crying subsides eventually and they pull away, and while he can’t help but feel somewhat embarrassed, he also feels far better than he’d felt since the Lions fell.

“How are you coping?” she asks kindly, softly, and he is grateful she’s no doubt found someone else to ask about Keith. He doesn’t know if he can handle it if she, of all people, asks him about her son. “Are you sleeping? The Holts’ father said you haven’t been.”

He laughs weakly, but that only brings more tears to his eyes. Her gaze is sympathetic.

“I’m alright,” he says finally. “Do you want me to take you to Keith?”

“I would like that very much,” she says, and together they walk to Keith’s room.

Though she tries to hide it from him, he can see the tightening of her jaw when she lays eyes on her son’s prone body, can see the tick in her cheek as she buries down whatever hell she’s going through. She is clearly much better at it than he is, but it only takes a day or so for him to realise that their way of coping with grief was similar. They end up sitting by Keith’s bedside together, not a word spoken, for some time.

At some point, she hears about Pidge’s idea and starts talking to Keith. She talks about all sorts of things: sometimes it’s about their trip on the space whale; other times it’s catching him up on her adventures since they parted. When he wakes, she’ll have to update him again, but, well, it passes the time. And it couldn’t hurt.

That is what he tells himself when Krolia takes a break from the room and leaves him in his chair beside Keith’s bed. He spends a few minutes looking around the room – white walls, television opposite Keith’s bed, large windows – but it’s a room he’s seen a thousand times and the looking around does little to curb the voice in his head that tries to convince him to talk to Keith. It’s that more than anything that works.

“I’m going spare in this room.” His voice is surprisingly croaky. It occurs to him that he hasn’t spoken in almost a week, the last time he remembers speaking being when Krolia had arrived, and he feels a little ashamed for it. “It might not be the room, though. I think I’m going spare in general.”

Keith says nothing. He remains still.

“I think if you were awake you’d be pretty disappointed in me,” he continues, his tone taking on a confiding edge that he’d only ever had with Keith. “I’ve been more of a mess than you’d approve of. Part of that might be you just being disapproving over me ‘wasting time’ on you or some bullshit though. Well, you’re worth it. You’ve always been worth it.”

“Don’t argue, you know I’m right,” he says.

He glances at Keith, hoping for some reaction only to get nothing. It’s too much to hope for, he guesses but he takes Keith’s hand anyway, squeezing gently, and continues talking.

“I’m sorry, though. For being so quiet. I’ve been here, I promise, even though it doesn’t sound like it. The others kept telling me to talk to you, because they said you might be able to hear or something, I don’t know. I just – I just didn’t know what to say, y’know? There’s not really much to say.

“Or maybe there is. I know there is. I know there are things we need to talk about, things we should have talked about a long time ago. But I just never knew how to say it. I’ve always been better with action than I have been with words.”

The beeping of the monitor remains steady as Shiro bows his head over Keith’s hand. It’s calming, steadying, something for his breathing to focus on while he lets his mouth run wild in the face of Keith’s unconsciousness.

“I’m a coward, Keith. That night on the Black Lion… I should have told you how I felt when you asked me about the clone memories."

He should have. Keith hesitantly asking him about what he remembered of their fight, obviously worried about his love confession, had been the perfect opportunity to voice the feelings that had grown between them over time. The opening was there and Keith looked so cautious and so hopeful, yet in the end, Shiro hadn't been able to say anything useful and they'd both been left upset.

"I just didn’t know what to say and my memories were so jumbled and I thought I had time to talk to you about it but… Well, you’d think I would’ve learnt not to take time for granted, considering everything that’s happened. Even with my illness, you’d think I’d know not to let a good thing slip through my fingers but, well, I’ve never really been good with romance.

“I guess what I need to say is…”

He takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly, building his courage.

He takes another steadying breath.

And leaps.

“I love you.”

Keith doesn’t react, but at that point, Shiro doesn’t need him to. Words come pouring out like a summer storm. He squeezes Keith’s hand lightly, drawing support from its warmth. The pressure he hadn’t noticed encasing his chest lessens as he speaks, and for the first time since he came back to life, he feels relief.

“I am  _in_ love with you. I will be until the day I die, however soon that may be. And this whole thing has shown me that it could happen whenever, and that if I don’t I’ll regret it for the rest of my life so, really, there’s no point in waiting,” he says. “I love you.”

The weight on his shoulders has lifted, and although he knows like Krolia that he’ll have to repeat it again when Keith awakens, the prospect doesn’t frighten him. It feels easier, somehow. The words are out now, no constraint left upon them. Repeating seems a piece of cake in comparison.

He’s still holding Keith’s hand. The contrary asshole part of him snidely remarks that he should take all the contact he can, and he doesn’t feel like arguing. Holding Keith’s hand, he feels comfortable. He feels like he’s home.

And that’s when it happens.

Keith’s hand twitches.

At first, Shiro thinks he must be imagining it. Keith awakening just moments after he’s confessed his love? It sounds like something out a romance novel that his willing brain conjured up, so he dismisses it.

But then his hand twitches again.

Shiro drops it. He gets to his feet, ready to jump into action –and do what, he doesn’t know – and leans across the bed to press the nurse alert. As the high-pitched alarm goes off, Keith groans, his eyes still closed but a grimace forming on his face.

“Keith?” Shiro calls. His heart races as his eyes drink in Keith’s movements, the thud echoing painfully in his ears. “Keith?”

In the bed, looking smaller than ever, the bruised and beaten figure groans again before his violet eyes flicker open.

“Shiro,” he breathes, voice reduced to a whisper by disuse. Slowly, very slowly, a smile spreads across his face, and while it’s very clear he’s in pain, it lights him up entirely and leaves Shiro more than a little breathless. “Took you long enough.”

Shiro’s ears go red. He huffs, leaning over Keith to pull the sheets up, and then he hesitates, his eyes connected with Keith’s. Then he presses a kiss to his forehead before pulling back. Keith yawns.

“Sleep,” Shiro commands, and when Keith looks fit to argue, he says, “We’ll talk about it when you wake up again. I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to it,” Keith says drowsily, closing his eyes and drifting off, but not before sighing, “Love you too.”

Shiro’s heart had stopped the moment the Lions ascended. He’d thought his world was over, that he’d have to say goodbye to the most important person in his life without ever explaining how much he meant. That he’d have to live alone in a world without Keith.

At that moment, as Krolia and the nurses rush into the room exclaiming excitedly at Keith’s awakening, he knows he won’t have to be without Keith again. Whatever happened, they’d be together until the end, and if he had anything to say about it, it’d be a while off yet. They’d have their time, he'd make sure of it, and they would have it together.

And his heart would be just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> And they lived happily ever after because Voltron: Legendary Defender was cancelled after s7 *wink wink*
> 
> You can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/damnspacebois) or [tumblr](https://damnspacebois.tumblr.com).


End file.
